His thoughts were now turning to the Pacific Islands which he hoped would be the sphere of Patteson’s future work. On Ascension Day, 1855, he left Auckland in the _Southern Cross_ again. Ascension Day was his favourite day for starting, for he felt the charge ringing in his ears: “Go ye and teach all nations.” He went first with Mrs. Selwyn and Patteson to Sydney. He wished to get permission to set up his school for the young Melanesians in Norfolk Island. He had become convinced that it was impossible to go on bringing the young islanders to school at Auckland, and then on account of the climate, to have to take them back after a few months to their own homes. This was much too expensive and wasteful a method to be continued, and he wished to find a suitable island where a school and a centre for the mission might be set up. Norfolk Island struck him as eminently suited for the purpose. It had been used as a convict settlement, but this had now been given up. Selwyn had visited the island with Sir George Grey, who approved of his idea, and wrote to the home government asking that the disused prison and a portion of the land should be granted to the Bishop for his school. Objections were made in some quarters because of another proposal for using Norfolk Island. There had been discovered in a Pacific Island named Pitcairn, an English population who proved to be the descendants of a certain John Adams, the leader of a mutiny in a Government vessel called the _Bounty_. Adams had brought up the children of the mutineers who survived and their descendants with great care, during the years in which they had lived unknown and separated from the outer world. Now that they had been discovered in their lonely home, it was considered that they were too many to go on living on the little island of Pitcairn, and the English Government intended to transport them to Norfolk Island. Objections were made in England to the idea of bringing native islanders from the Pacific to live alongside with the Pitcairners, lest they should corrupt these interesting descendants of English mutineers, who, it was asserted, had grown up in a state of primitive innocence under a patriarchal system. Bishop Selwyn, however, urged that it would be good for the Pitcairners to help in the work of training the natives and of navigating the Mission vessel. But the Governor of New South Wales would not agree to his proposal. The Bishop was much interested in the Pitcairners and waited to see them on their arrival at Norfolk Island before he started for the Pacific. He was warmly welcomed by them. The careful provision of John Adams had seen to it that they were brought up as Christians, but naturally none of them had been confirmed. It was decided therefore to leave Mrs. Selwyn on the Island to teach and prepare the girls and women for confirmation, whilst Selwyn and Patteson went for their cruise to visit the northern Pacific Islands.